


Day Four: Family

by Demia



Series: JadeRose Week [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, F/F, Family Feels, Non-Graphic Smut, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Kanaya/Rose - one-sided, Past Terezi/Rose, Past Vriska/Rose, Strilondes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 04:11:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7742842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demia/pseuds/Demia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose Lalonde, Ephialtes without equals, finds herself with a new obsession.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day Four: Family

## 

Day 4: Grimdark / Monsters or magical creatures

  


### Family

“As if you have any idea how to court someone,” your brother taunts you, all arrogant and presumptuous as he is prone to be. 

“Let alone another specie, am I right?” Dave adds, going along with Dirk's rant only because he finds it funny. You glare at them both, and where Dave cowers behind your older brother, said older brother just answers with a puff of smokey breath.

“Stop being like that, Rosie,” Dave whines, just a little in the back of his throat, and you glare harder, darker. He is afraid of you, as he is smart to be, and for only this once you decide to let him be. He has a hard existence already, he doesn't need you to make his days any more difficult. 

“You all lack faith,” Roxy drawls, elegantly draped on the only couch in the room, as if it belonged to her.  
You've renounced any desires to reclaim your spaces when she comes by your room, it's pointless and a waste of time, anyway. “Rosie is the smoothest of smooth operators around. She can court a _human_ and make it happen,” she says, lifting her arms in the air, her drink spilling all over your floor, sticky and bitter, just like the taste in your mouth. 

But then again, she is family, and family is everything. 

“Ah,” Dirk spits out, and you know his irritation stems all from the fact that his boyfriend has just left him for some succubus or another. A Serket, you think, and you would gladly taunt him about it for months, if you were confident that the retaliation would come at a price you'd be willing to pay. “A human! Rox, you don't know what you're saying. Get sober, and then we will keep your opinions in consideration. Maybe.” 

“Leave her alone,” you and Dave protest at the same time, subtly – but surely – moving to stand in between them, your back to your sister. She is harmless, when she is in these conditions, and Dirk is never harmless. More over so when he is _hurting_.  
Poor boy and his silly crushes, he can't keep a mate for how hard he tries, and it's tearing him apart. 

What number was this one, you ask yourself.  
The fifth in a little over two months?  
The sixth?

And he demands to tease you about your courting techniques? Ah, he has guts, your dear brother, guts and a face that much resembles his derriere. A little, hypocritical, shriveled heart.

“Yeah, go ahead, make it look like I'm a monster to her, it's not like I'm the one to always hold her bangs back while she pukes out her organs and everything, right?” Dirk tuts at you both, and Dave pouts, staring down at the ground.  
Coward, you think of him, but you pat his shoulder gently.  
He is your baby brother, no matter how weak and pathetic he is.

Family is _everything_. 

“You abide to your duty, wow. Such an accomplishment, such goodness in your heart,” you tease him, spitting venom from your lips.  
It doesn't matter, anyway. You always fight, when you invite them over to your room, and even more so when you bring up matters important enough to have a debate over. 

“You're not duty, dipshit,” he hisses, his citrine eyes staring deep into you, like he could bypass your shield if he only bothered to stare hard enough. 

_Oh, Dirk, no_ , you think.  
He will never, ever be allowed to enter your mind. No one will. No one is strong enough to.

“We are too. As the leader of this breed, keeping us in good shape is your duty. Not one you're committed too strongly to, either.” You pointedly stare at your back. Roxy is everything but in good shape. 

Such a sad Nightmare, she makes, sprawled wide open and vulnerable on that couch, drowning in her booze like she knows and wants nothing else out of life.  
She is pathetic too, as much as Dave is, albeit for different reasons, and you pity her a great deal. 

You pity everyone in this room, yourself included, because you're such a miserable bunch, Nightmares without a path to follow, without a Creed, without purpose and drive. 

At least three out of the four of you are powerful enough to rival an entire Church of Nightmares all on their own.  
Dave… Let's say he has other qualities.

Poor Dave. You ruffle his hair out of sisterly affection, and he smiles, all trembling and desperate, at you.

Poor, poor Dave. 

The last time he tried to Treat a subject, he gave him an erection. Definitely not a great Nightmare, your littlest brother. 

“Why don't you take the leadership, then? You're so much better than anyone else, after all,” Dirk says, and you would believe he is merely joking around, bullshitting you, but you know how insecure and fragile he is, under his layers of masks and heavy coating of badassery. 

He is like an open book of anguish and vulnerability, to you.  
Because, even if he – and anyone else – is never and never will be welcomed in your mind, you can slip inside his at any given moment, without him even noticing.  
That's how subtle and refined your power is. 

That's the control you have over your siblings. 

~*~

The first time you fall for someone outside of your specie, you keep it to yourself.  
She is a succubus, one Vriska Serket, known everywhere from Derse to Skaia Central. She falls in your bed with ease, like she belongs there, and she is monstrous in her true form, with as many arms as she had eyes. 

Had, yes, because you took them away, all but one, because she kept using them in the wrong way whenever she was close to you.  
You couldn't stand her, so full of herself, so sure she was the best creature around. 

You relationship was more one of contempt and competition than one of love.  
It was good as long as it lasted, perfect, even, but you moved on and she moved to a hospital for a while.

Such things happen. 

The second time, it's for a drinker, but she already belongs to someone else, a deity, you think, and you wouldn't dare to destroy the beautiful picture they paint together, much rater preferring to observe from a distance. 

The third time, it is for a dragon, and it lasts even less than nothing. Your infatuation appears and then it's gone, you barely have time to savor it, but Terezi stays for a while, even if you pay her no mind and no attention. She stays for a while, everything is great, but in your heart there is no spark at all, not even the hard kind you felt for Vriska Serket. 

Eventually, Terezi gets tired of you and you watch her leave, her wings enormous and majestic. Oh, she is beautiful like nothing you've ever seen, but she is simply not what you're looking for. 

The fourth time, you have to tell your family.  
It starts as always does, as a thought more pressing than the others.  
She is a Shifter, a good one, one that doesn't ever masquerade herself as a human, even f it would come easier, even if it would serve her well. 

She is a proud one, a hard and powerful one, and she simply loathes you and your entire kind. 

It starts as a thought and becomes an infatuation and becomes an obsession. 

Jade Harley is all you can think about, and suddenly you have to tell your family because you're planning something big, something important, something that will last forever. 

Jade Harley is all you can think about and she needs to become your mate.  
To become yours. 

~*~

“A shifter, hmm,” Roxy says, focused hard on the intricate design she is trying to put your hair into.  
One pin perforate your skull and you keep a whine inside. Roxy apologize once and moves on. “I was with a shifter, some time ago. John, I think? Sex was fun.”

“Yes, I supposed it might be,” you say, smirking at her from the mirror. She grins back, and she braids tree small locks of your hair.

“But that's not important now!” she exclaims, tugging too hard at your hair. She is putting a lot of effort in it, though, so much that you would feel terribly bad telling her off. 

You knew you were putting the well-being of your scalp on the line when you accepted her request of doing your hair, after all. 

This is the price you agreed to pay, and you will pay in silence. 

“Is it not?” you ask her, because she is not going to continue without your input.  
Roxy is a… peculiar conversation partner. She is a good orator, nothing to say about that, but she is also plastered drunk most of the time. Talking to her is in equal parts elating and wearing your nerves thin. 

“Of course not. Rosie,” she starts with her chiding tone, and you know you're in for a long, long rant. “You can't expect to have the sex without even properly wooing her, you know?” 

She doesn't let you respond, you don't even try. She takes a short, sharp breath, and she begins, “What did we say about consent?” You know what you said about consent. You know all about consent, you don't need a fucking reminder, but oh, the Terrors have mercy of your poor soul, she has started now and there will be nothing strong enough to stop her. 

“We don't want a repeat of miss Serket, do we? Hint, we don't. If I have to listen to Dirky ramble on and on again about how you put someone in the hospital – the fucking hospital, Rosie, the Terrors have mercy! – I swear on my blood that you will be punished in honest, _Rosie_. You need to woo her properly, this time. No more funny business from you and your weird relationships. No more hospitalizations, no more hurting others. We are Nightmares, not brutes, Rose. Do you understand? Rose? Do you understand really well what I'm saying?”

“Yes, dear sister, I understand perfectly well what you're saying,” you tell her, refraining from heaving one or two-thousand sighs.  
Roxy is lovely, but she such a pain in the ass sometimes. 

And she doesn't get it. She never has. She doesn't even try to look at things from your prospective.

Yes, Vriska ended up in the hospital, but it was well-deserved and completely justifiable. 

Roxy – and Dirk, too – would have acted exactly the same as you, were they in your position for even one minute of their lives. 

But no, no, they never bothered trying to understand your motives, they simply went and accused you of being out of control, and fundamentally twisted, and evil, and Grimdark. 

Like, fuck them and their judgment, really!  
You've seen Grimdark close and personal. You've been Grimdark, in your youth. The day you sent miss Serket to the hospital you were in full control of your mental capacities.  
You were the lightest, un-grimmest Nightmare this side of the Ring. 

And you still are. The days of Grimdarkness and follies are over you. You are mature now, and not interested in the darker pits of your powers, even if they are a blessing to behold, even if you remember how it felt to be invincible and marvelous, a Goddess amongst lowlife; powerful, unstoppable and holy darkness in your veins, stars in your eyes, unseeable and never-ending deep. 

No, you left all that in another life, in another age.  
You're better now.  
Something that your dear sister and oldest brother can't say about their little addictions. 

“Good, Rosie. Good. Keep it that way.”

“Yes, Roxy.” 

She puts another hairpin in your scalp and this time you growl at her. She shushes you, because she always does, and her happy-go-lucky smile comes back. It's mindless and superficial and a mask, just as Dirk's hard-ass attitude is a mask, and you suddenly remember how much love and hatred feel similar when they're directed towards family.

And family might be everything – it is everything – but it's an endless hassle.  
You would have a much easier life if it was only you, or possibly only you and Dave.  
He is not as painful to have around as your elders.

*

“You should write her a song. And knit her a scarf,” Dave suggests, little sparkles of joy in his eyes.  
  
He gets so hopefully happy, whenever one of you remembers to spend some time with him.  
He gets that starved look on his face, like he is ready to attach himself to your arm and never let go again, but he never does. He never starts contact, not even when it's clear – would be clear to anyone else but him – that it is allowed and welcomed. 

“I don't think she is the kind of person who would appreciate such gifts,” you tell him, humming softly under your breath as you knit.  
It's a lazy morning, and you still have to go to sleep for the day, but it's the only time Dave is alright enough to have around.  
You want to punch him a little less, in the early mornings, after a long night of work well done. 

And even if he shivers and trembles and gasps every time you talk to him or look at him or give him any kind of attention in general, you can still appreciate his presence, to an extent.

Poor Dave, he is so weak, you muse, looking straight at him. His hair is nonexistent white, and his skin is ashen and dry, breaking apart, cracking all over. He has blood where he shouldn't have.  
He has blood where your kind has smoke and fear.

His eyes, you haven't seen for the longest time.  
He is mimicking Dirk, the most powerful of your breed, and he's trying to be a perfect copy.  
Poor Dave, your littlest brother, your protegee, almost. 

He should try Grimdarkness, sometimes. It would do him wonders.  
Grimdark Dave would be something as holy as you were, you're sure. And it would be so good for his awful, terrible self-esteem. 

“Who doesn't, though?” he asks, and he is trying not to look at you, all cozy and cuddly on the couch. You wonder how long it will be until you break and bark at him to join you. How long until he starts to sob quietly, begging for a touch to his tearing skin. 

He is burnt paper and ashes, a blessed, torn up Wild Scripture tome.  
He is yours. Through and through.  
Your blood, your flesh, your bones. 

You will frame his corpse, someday, and you will keep every inch of him you will be able to retrieve.  
You will wear jewels like ivory, made out of his remains. 

Morbid as it sounds, it is your wish and his too, and of Dirk's and Roxy's, to be held close to your breed even posthumously. 

“A lot of people don't like receiving gifts, Dave. It is more of a human custom, gifts.”  
He cocks his head to the side. Oh, poor, poor Dave. 

He doesn't understand anything.  
Even the most basic of hints. You could put the truth on a silver platter, deliver it in his room with precise instructions to explain every single bit of it to him, and he still would be able to see. 

Poor, littlest, misplaced brother of yours, he is so blind to everything, and he wants to belong with you so badly. 

You cave, you pat the spot next to you on the couch and welcome him under your arm. He is so little and shaky and terrified, nestled against your side, and you can't not sigh in pure, elated relief, when you have him so close, yours.  
Yours to protect and to hold and to keep blind. 

Family is everything, after all, even when misplaced and broken and torn apart. 

~*~

Jade Harley is your target for the night.  
It is a dreadful time of the year, the White Lights, for every Nightmare this side of the Ring.

No one wants to pay for Treats during White Lights, they are all too busy buying emotions from the Orgai and the Motus, they don't have the money to spend on you and your specie.

But, someone has bought you to haunt Jade Harley's night.  
The job description is as bland as they come, no fears listed, not even the barest of hints as to what you have to show Jade Harley this night. 

You're not one of the best Nightmares for nothing, though, and you can do your job no matter how little or how much you know about your targets. 

*

Jade Harley has black skin and blacker hair. You see her shed her Shifts one at a time, and you see her Core, the basic appearance of her body. Her eyes are shiny emerald gems, the most beautiful green you've ever seen in your long, long existence. 

Her skin is a slick, slimy, smooth expanse of void, littered by star like outer space, and there is no oxygen in her room because Allagai, the Shifters, don't need any. 

“Ephialtes,” she calls you, beckons you, her voice as deep as the whispers of the Holy Horrorterrors your Masters and Lords.  
It's the first time in your entire life, an age of belonging to the Ring, an era of excelling at your job, that someone has heard you coming. 

You stop in your tracks, but only for one moment. 

“Allage,” you murmur in her room. You can't spend too much time in here, your job doesn't work like that.  
You plant a seed, born a Treat, and then you leave.  
You don't stay for tea and chatter. 

“Who paid for our meeting, this fine night?” she asks, blasé and uncaring, brushing you off as if you weren't the most terrifying daughter of the Holy Terrors the Ring has ever borne.  
She might not know your name or your appearance, but your power speaks louder than any identification one may need. 

“We don't ask for their name,” you tell her, making yourself comfortable in a high corner of her room. Her walls are painted a soft pastel green, pathetic misrepresentation of the gleam of her irises. 

“And what phobias did they give you? What nightmare would you put in my head?” she is taunting you. She has the same arrogant, scathing tone Dirk takes when he wants to piss you off, when he thinks he can make you see the errors of your way. 

Sadly for him – and for Jade Harley too – your ways don't ever have any errors in them. 

You work _flawlessly_. 

“None. Your description is a name and a place and nothing else. I would have to imagine something exclusive and unique for you,” you purr, the sole idea of creating something new, for once, of leaving an imprint with your sign on it in her mind, is enough to get you going, to give you a thrill and a hot shiver in your atrophied limbs. 

It's been long since the last Rose Lalonde original has graced and terrified a mind.  
A long and painful time.  
You're almost eager to work, tonight, even if it's a dreadful time for a Nightmare. 

Ephialtai everywhere despair as the White Lights being, and here you are, about to paint the most beautiful of your Treats. 

For Jade Harley, you're going to go full out. 

“Go ahead, then. I'll be sure to e-mail you my disappointment when whatever you cook up for me does nothing but make me want to go back to sleep,” she jeers, and you have to make a bet with yourself.

You will have to come back as the Treat ends to see how she reacts. You need to see the terror in her eyes. As beautiful as they are, it will surely be the sweetest you've seen. And you've seen a lot, over the years. 

~*~

“The Western Church has invited us for the Black Season celebrations,” Dirk tells you, invading your room without a care in the world, leaning against your wall as it belongs to him, and you seethe inside.  
His arrogance is the worst of your enemies, even if it is nothing more than a facade.  
  
“And we won't go,” you tell him, giving him only a grim smile and an off-brand kind of attention.  
He doesn't deserve anything more pricey than that. Not today, at least.

He has spent the last week being a little shit to everyone. He made Roxy cry twice, because he can't keep his bitterness at his failure of a love life out of his mouth when speaking to his siblings, to you. 

“Leave finality to the grown-ups, Rose,” he scolds you, and it comes out sounding like bitching, like he's throwing a stupid tantrum. 

He also looks like a whiny little child, with dark circles under his eyes because he can't risk sleeping when he know you're waiting to give him the worst nightmares of his life, he can't risk sleeping when he knows he will dream of his last boyfriend breaking up with him over and over again. All on his own, too, with no extra input from you. 

Oh, no, your nightmares, your Treats, are something to behold with much admiration and much fear, not things found in every silly human teenager's mind. 

“May terror stop your heart, brother dearest,” you curse at him, spitting it out like the foulest of bites. 

“Yours too, beloved sister. Moving on from your petty insults,” he says, haughty and irritating and stupid, stupid. 

May the Holy Terrors have pity on your puny soul, you loathe him. 

You loathe him just as much as Jade Harley loathes your kind. 

He is lovely, of course, because he is your brother, and you would save his life ten times over, if he ever found himself in danger of losing it, but you hate him as deep and as hard as your soul can manage. He just gets on your nerves so much. 

So fucking much. 

And he loves it. He is so stupid and petty and fastidious. He adores pissing you off. It's his favorite past-time. 

“You need a fucking hobby,” you hiss at him, but he waves you off with a movement of his hand.

He repeats, “Moving on,” and it sounds forced and angry, “the Church invited us, and Roxy wants to go, but Roxy is always drunk and she doesn't know what she's saying most times. I want to weight this decision with you. Sober person to sober person. What do you think? And,” he stops before you can even begin, showing you the palm of his hand and the hardest glare he can manage while running on no sleep at all, “keep the passive-aggressiveness to yourself, sister dear.”

You take a deep breath, mull it over.  
You stare into his eyes. He doesn't want to not go, per se. 

He would love to feel a Creed around him, it's his deepest, oldest dream.  
Have a Church surrounding him, the Holy Walls, and Sacred Scriptures echoing against them, and all the faithful singing together and he just a crumb in their midst, not held higher or lower, just the same as everyone else. 

You think Grimdarkness would do go to him too, not only to Dave.  
Because Dave, poor littlest brother, is so good at mimicking Dirk, he has plagiarized his issues too. Taking a new, interesting spin on them, but still copying them to perfection. 

“We shouldn't,” you eventually say, and Dirk nods at you. Because, for all that it's his dream, family is everything, and he knows how dangerous it is. “It's not safe for him,” you whisper anyway, even if he knows and sees and _knows_. You have to say it, you have to make sure he understands. 

He is not impartial, when it comes to things he has wished for for a long time. 

You, on the other hand, very much are. 

He sees the possibilities, you see the realities of it. 

He sees Holy Walls and hears Sacred Wild Chants, incense burning slow and dizzying, whispers of the Creed, and Treats raising high to the ceilings, all and every unique and fused together.  
You see Dave bleeding blood where everyone else has smoke. You see Dave cracking until he is nothing but crumbs of a person.

Dirk sees himself part of it, you see who would never be welcomed. 

And you're not afraid, not here, in your own home, weighting the options, but you would be if he decided to take Dave into a Church. 

“But…” he murmurs, low and miserable and a touch macabre, “But we can protect him, Rose.”  
There is so much hope in his eyes, you feel like a monster as you grip it hard in your hand and squeeze it until it bleeds out. 

“We can't.” You say it like it's a universal truth, because it fucking is. “Yes, we can take on anyone who would try to hurt him, and they would be a lot, Dirk, a lot. But then,” you shrug your shoulders, look straight into his citrine eyes, and you force him to understand, “Then we would have to tell him why they are picking on him. And that, my dearest brother, is not fucking _protecting him_.”

You have a great deal of affection for Dave in your heart. He is your littlest brother, after all. 

*

You spend the Black Season inauguration ceremony on your own. You don't want to stay home, whit Roxy too drunk to function and Dirk too desperate and alone to let you simply be. 

You would feel guilty, and monstrous, and wrong, if you were to see them. 

So you ask Dave to come out with you, because you know the elders would be no company to him, but he refuses, says someone has to keep an eye on them, to keep them safe, and you feel a surge of pity and fondness for him so strong it chokes you, and you part with him with a kiss on his forehead. 

The beaming smile he gives at your back, you can feel it warm on your skin, but you won't let it leave an impression in your eyes. 

Nightmares, Ephialtai, are not creatures made for love and affection and smiles as bright as Dave's. 

You sit in a pub, uncaring of the people around you, occupying a precinct far from yours with your powers, filling it up to the brim until everyone feels too uncomfortable to continue to pretend to breathe.

Fuck them, you think, as you down your fifth shot-glass in under half an hour. 

The seat beside you is empty, and then it is not anymore, and Jade Harley is staring with eyes like radioactive uranium, and she is still so fucking gorgeous and terrifying, like a blessing from the Horrorterrors Themselves.

“What'cha doin here?” you slur, just a little.  
Your tongue is all kinds of tied up, and you wonder and wonder how Roxy likes it, how can she stands this feeling all the time? How can she put up with this fuzziness around the brain?

It makes it hard to think properly. 

“Having a blast. You?” she spits out, the question a burning declaration of war, but this is a celebration and wars are not allowed. There is a fucking sign just outside the pub. 

Fights are not permitted in here, nor are wars or eyes as beautiful and frightening as hers. 

You order another shot, you gulp it down, and suddenly the world has another light to it. It's kinder, happier, lighter.  
And so are you. 

The Shift she has taken on is one of gray skin and dog ears on her head, amidst her curly hair.  
Her body is toned with muscles, all hard planes visible under the skimpy clothes appropriate to this celebration, and she has curves, but only barely. 

You like your women with more roundness to them, usually, but Jade Harley is something else. Something you can't even admire for her body, no. You've see her true form, and she is just as terrible as you can be. Just as perfectly holy and god-like and horrible awful disgusting flawless. 

Jade Harley, contrarily to you, is embracing her Grimdarkness with a grace you have never had the pleasure to reach.  
She is embracing all her powers, all her potential, and she is making the most of it.  
It shows, too. 

You ask her, slurring every word and drawling a hard accent typical of your breed, to take you home. 

And she does. 

*

  
You wake up, as the best of occasions, sore, bleeding and bruised.

And you feel well loved, well done, well used. You feel tired in the best kind of ways, and the woman sleeping next to you is a mass of black, writhing sludge, so pure and perfect and amazing. 

Breathtaking. 

You caress her sticky skin and she purrs to life, to awakening, Shifting quickly and mindlessly to an almost perfect representation of the woman from yesterday night. But she is shorter now, and less toned, softer. 

“Do you like this better?” she asks, scathing even if she has just opened her eyes. 

“I'm not picky,” you say, shrugging, still pressing your hands all over her.  
Actually, you do like this better, but giving her the satisfaction of hearing it would be fucking abysmal.

*

“Where the fuck were you?” Is the first thing you hear as you step into your house.  
It's a screech of a question, all concern and worry and fright.  
You heave a sigh and you mentally prepare yourself for something tedious and completely unnecessary. As a fucking old creature – old as balls, as Dave is prone to say – you think you are free to spend the night away, if you so wish. 

“I was outside.” It's your simple response. Your mind is pain and slowness. The hungover hitting you too hard, it's been too long since the last time you went and got yourself truly drunk, but you don't regret one single second of the night you've spent. 

Best night, sincerely. 

Best Black Season celebration, too.

“No shit, Rose,” Dave mutters, and he looks tired, poor him. He must have tended to your elders beck and call, as a little, pathetic, lovely servant, while you were out having the best time of your life. And the best sex you've ever had. 

Holy Terrors, fuck Vriska Serket. If you were sure she was the best woman under the covers until today, you've learned how terribly wrong you were. 

Jade Harley wins a billion to zero against Vriska. There is just no room for comparisons, really. Harley is on another planet altogether. 

“Well, I'm here, I'm fine, I don't see why you're giving me the stink eye.” You stare at all three of them, their arms crossed on their chests, Roxy bummed out as she always is when the booze-effect is over and she hasn't drunk her first glass of the day yet, Dirk looks like he has a stick so far up his ass he is tasting wood coated in blood and intestines and Dave, well, he continues to look like the most tired and sad creature the Ring hosts.

“You were out all night!” Dirk spits out, raising both his eyebrows. Wow, a real expression on his face. You feel blessed. 

“So?” 

“Rosie,” Roxy starts, and then she must see the bruises on your skin, because her cerise eyes get huge and wild. “What did you do, Rosie? Did you get in a fight? Did you get someone else hurt?”

“Nothing, no, no. Or possibly maybe, don't know. Hard to see bruises on a Shifter, after all,” you answer her, shrugging off your coat and hanging it up on its hook in the wall. It is painted in lilac, just for you. “If they don't want you to know, you simply don't. Anyway, she was alive and breathing when I left.”

Breathing hard, at that. Panting, almost, and gurgling deep in her throat and almost begging for you to give her more, touch her more.  
Sadly, you need to have her wanting you. You need her to crave you, to come to you, to become yours. 

You can't very well give her everything she wants so soon, can you?  
Down this road, and Jade Harley will get tired of you in under a year.  
You want to keep her for far longer than that, you want to keep her forever. 

“What did you do!?” Dirk repeats Roxy's words, and in his mouth they sound less concerned and more accusing and for some reasons you're not surprised by this development at all. 

“Sex, obviously. Seriously, dearest siblings, what is the first thing you think when someone comes back home the next morning, all bruised up and smiling?”

“If it's you,” Dirk says, nearly a threat, a bite, “that you murdered someone and have safely hidden all your tracks.”

“Well,” you tell him, mimicking all of them and crossing your arms under your breasts. You have a bite-mark on the left one and it burns like holy fire. You repress all your winces because they would be terribly out of place, paired with your pissed off expression and your pose. “That's just mean.”

“Mean, yes. Tell that to the girl you left with one eye and one arm,” Dave says, mutters, and you glare at him. He is good at being on your side, usually, but never when Dirk is in the room, never when Dirk picks on you and not Roxy. 

It's obvious, after all, where your littlest's loyalties lay.  
Roxy is the motherly one, the more cuddly one, the one who never waits too long before showering him in affection. You're colder, not as cold as Dirk, but cold enough to make him upset most of the times.

It's obvious where his loyalties lay, and it's obvious why they lay that way, but it still hurts. 

“Miss Serket deserved it. And more,” you say, and you pray it is the last time you will have to defend yourself on this. 

Vriska deserved it. You just made the world a big fucking solid and your siblings should start to understand it. To thank you for it.

The fight – or discussion, or interrogation – goes on long enough that it comes the time for you to get to work, and you hate them openly about this, because you had panned to get a few more hours of sleep as soon as you had hit home, but no, they have to be like that and now you're dead tired on your feet and you have four targets for tonight, and not a single one of them offers any kind of challenge. 

You wonder if you should drop by Jade's house to say hello, to maybe make her just a little bit curious about you. A little bit less focused on your specie and more on you as a person. 

*

Jade Harley's house is dark as a grave, and just as silent. You walk imaginary lines in the middle of it, and you lay down on the air, waiting for something to happen, maybe, or for her to arrive. 

When she doesn't, you decide to leave her a message, written elegantly on her wall, lilac pen you always keep on your person to strike through the targets you've completed for the night.

You were out, sadly.   
I would have loved to spend some more time in your delightful company, my dearest Harley. Allagai of your caliber are hard to come around to, and rare as the most gorgeous of jewels.  
I deeply wish you will be here the next time I decide to stop by for a visit of pleasure.  
Yours  
RL

*

The next time you stop by her house, she is indeed there, lounging on her bed, wearing the skins of the most desirable of women, draping her long, long hair all over her naked body, blocking your view. 

You think this is simply what she is used to wear when she is around her home doing nothing at all, because you've not even hinted at when you would come back and she would have no means to know, but she smirks up at you, showing a mouthful of sharp teeth you know intimately. 

“Next time,” she says, and her voice still sounds barking and angry, when she speaks to you, “skip the paint job. My walls are already nice as they are.”

“This green is hideous,” you argue, caressing the wall closer to you. You can see the spot where you've left her the message, it is cleaned out badly, but the words are not legible anymore. Only your initials are, perfectly untouched as the day you wrote them. 

She must have done it on purpose.  
Jade Harley, you have learned, is not the kind of person who leaves something unattended to. If she wants something gone, it will be gone. Forever, so far away as to be completely insignificant, and possibly with no means at all to come back. 

“You are hideous,” she rebukes, smiling at you with all the teeth she made in her mouth.  
Oh, this form pleases you terribly, you can almost feel, already, the sharp pain of her mouth closing on your flesh, her fangs breaking your skin, and you want it, you crave it like you've never craved anything else in your life. 

You need it, and the need burns high and painful, bright and unbridled.  
“Maybe,” you tell her, and your voice is scratches on a vinyl record, nails on concrete. “You're gorgeous, on the other hand.”

Smooth operator, Roxy said, and she was so right, you see the fair blush raising on Jade Harley's cheeks, her high cut cheekbones, the perfection of her features painting in dark red.

And she's yours, at least for the night.  
She is yours for this moment.  
She is liquefying under your hands and you're riding the tide, you're high on her power, on yours, on the songs you're playing together. 

Jade Harley is your obsession, and she is the best kind of obsession you could have asked for. 

*

A year down the line and you think Jade's walls are more lilac than green. She keeps your signatures and nothing else, but there are your initials everywhere, and you're so pleased every time you step in her room.  
She beams wide, she beams bright, now, her loathing is there, shines through all the time, when you mentions the Treats you create, when you mention your powers, your job, your family. 

But she is taken with you, she _loves_ you, what you can give her, what you can make her feel, the way you slip fear in her mind every time you leave and laugh at her for her fast breathing, for her accelerated pulse. 

She loves you and she loves your powers, even if she still hates your kind.  
You can't say you care, usually, but tonight is different. 

Tonight, you need her powers. 

“Be quiet,” you tell your siblings, and they are obligated to comply to your orders, because this is your territory, this is something you know and they don't. You have control in your hands, power in your palm, and they can do nothing about it. Nothing at all.

“Are you sure this could help?” Roxy whispers, for once in her life sober, twitchy and shaking.  
Fear, you think, tastes nice when coming from your own. 

“We don't have much alternative, do we?” Dirk says, desolate, pained. He is cradling Dave's body like a child with a beloved stuffed animal, and you would think him selfish for this, for not sharing the last contact with your littlest brother, but you need to guide them and Roxy cannot be trusted with such a precious, fragile thing in her arms. Not when she's shaking like the most terrifying of earthquakes.

“ _Be quiet_ ,” you repeat, hissing deep in the back of your throat, almost growling at them.  
You see Jade's house getting closer, and you move quicker, your breath coming easier as you caress the external walls of her bedroom.

She's home, you would recognize her Trace across miles and miles.  
You knock a the glass of her window, and it doesn't take even a minute for her to come peeking out, naked as always, because clothes are useless to her, the skin she is wearing is already an outfit. She leans forward, steals a kiss from your mouth before you can even talk, and then she stares at you. 

“Been a while,” she says, a hand coming to rest on your nape, pulling you forward. 

“I have a favor to ask, beloved,” you murmur against her lips, her fangs biting your mouth, teasing you with promises of pain that could be coming later tonight, if you weren't here for a very real, very important reason that has nothing to do with laying in bed next to her. 

“Ask away.”

“I need a portal to Earth.”  
Jade stops, her lips still on yours, her fingers scraping your neck, her eyes narrow, shine brighter into yours.  
She growls. 

“No can do, Ephialtes,” she spits out, talking against you and making you shiver. “It's against the protocols.”

“Not for me, Harley,” you tells her, your hands closing on her shoulders, pushing her away enough to make looking at her less dizzying. “It's my youngest brother.” You motion for Dirk and Roxy to come forward, and Jade sees them, she Shifts into something much more resembling her usual, favored appearance.  
All grayscale skin and black hair like vipers, and dog ears and green, _green_ eyes.

“You brought your Creed,” she says, betrayal plain as day, as the easiest of Treats.

Praise the Terrors you're not prone to mindless fear, and your brain processes her anger outside of the circumstances you find yourself in. You're sure she will understand, as soon as you've explained.

“Not my Creed,” you correct her, “they're my family. And we need your help.”

“No can do, _lovely_ ,” she spits out the nickname, usually so sweet and delectable on her lips, like it's the worst of insults, and you try to not take it the wrong way. 

“Listen to me.”

“Why?”  
You take her hands, grip them tight, stare into her eyes.

“Because you'll understand, if you listen,” you whisper, your voice carries the breath of a beggar, a pathetic, pitiful little prayer.

Jade hums, and she nods at you to continue, but her glacial glare is fixed on your siblings, and she doesn't seem very cooperative. 

“Dave is not an Ephialtes. He is born human,” you explain to her. “He was given to us as payment, and his mother is our mother too. We took him in as our own, but he doesn't belong in the Ring. If he doesn't return to his plane he will die.”

~*~

Dave looks happy, safe, healthy in a way he has never been while living with you. 

Jade lets you see him every time you ask her to, she opens a portal and let you stare all you want, lets you absorb every small detail of your littlest brother's new life. 

And when you cry, when you sob in longing and craving and missing, she holds you close to her heart, she surrounds you, she kisses every inch of your face, and she lets you cry on her skin, smooth and black and shiny. 

Dave is happy, and you should be elated, but having him so far away from you is torture.  
Being able to only see him and never interact is terrifying, and you can't help but pray to the Holy Terrors every night, for his health and for his happiness and for him to come back, one day. Come back to you, to his family, to his rightful place. 

“In death,” Jade murmurs to you, kissing your neck, your shoulders, drinking your black tears of pain, “he will come back to you.” It's a promise and it does nothing to soothe your wounds, but it's the only thing you have, and you take it gladly, letting her pet your hair, caress your skin, bite your flesh and leave her mark. 

In death, you think, in death you will keep a piece of her too.  
She is not part of your breed, but she is family, now, and family is everything. 

You will keep a piece of her too.


End file.
